Seattle Mayor
Bertha Knight Landes
had nothing to do with choosing the tunnel boring machine, the machine that may be inoperative
until early
next year.

The machine boring the new State Route 99 tunnel under Seattle may not get back to work
until the end of March 2015 while efforts continue to repair "Bertha."

The Washington State Department of Transportation said Monday that, according to design contractor
Seattle Tunnel Partners, the new target date to open the tunnel will be November 2016.
That still falls within the deadline of when WSDOT wanted the project completed, but is about a
year later than the target STP had set.

Bertha has been stuck since December after digging 1,000 feet of the 1.7-mile tunnel. A
previous estimate made in February set a target date to resume tunneling for September.

So it is unfair to tie this failure to Landes, especially since she is no longer able to
object to the slur.

Who should the machine be named after? That seems
obvious, at least to me.